


Warrior Red

by MumblingSage



Category: Coriolanus - Shakespeare
Genre: (some men just look so good covered in blood and Martius is one of them), Blood Kink, Body Worship, Cunnilingus, F/M, Homecoming, Married Couple, Menstrual Sex, No shame, kinky fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:25:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: The campaign is over, and Virgilia and Caius have waited for so long to be reunited that nothing will stand in their way.





	

She wakes aching.

Lingering on the soft edge of discomfort, the ache is hard to place: it bathes her body like liquid, all-encompassing. Everywhere she feels empty. Empty as the place in the bed beside her. Hollow with worry in her stomach and impatience in her lungs, and a sudden sharp pang of loneliness between her legs.

She finds Caius’ letter in the bedroom chest and rereads it, tracing the large, plain writing with a fingertip. When Virgilia raises the parchment she imagines she can smell him on it, and the odors of the tent and camp: rain-washed canvas, drowning smoke, the sharp sour sweetness of iron. Even with her eyes shut she knows the words. He will be coming home soon. The messenger who ran into the Martius family’s courtyard yesterday had confirmed it. Soon…perhaps even today.

Another pang stabs through her, no sentimental ache now. She takes a deep breath. Her nurse always told her how important it is to breathe well to bear pain. But sometimes even now, after they've shared five years of marriage and a child, she forgets to breathe, missing him. Foolish as a girl.

She doesn’t know how to be wise. And foolish young girls, at least, are cheerful in a way that most soldiers' wives are not.

The parchment brushes her lips and tickles the tip of her nose. At last she pulls it down, folds it carefully, and puts it away. As Virgilia lowers the lid of the chest, the ache dulls a little. All the same, when a servant comes with her breakfast she asks that a hot bath be prepared. It will soothe her, compose her, prepare her to greet her husband properly.

In the meantime, she sits with some spinning, turning out a length of lumpy thread before her maid taps at the door. She expects to be told her bath is ready, but instead the girl whispers, “My lady, your lord husband has returned.”

Virgilia lets the spindle tumble into the basket beside her and sweeps past the girl with a nod of thanks. Her steps pick up as she approaches the atrium and hears the rumble of a soft voice echoing off the walls—his voice. Despite the letter’s forewarning, evidence of his presence washes her in waves of inexpressible surprise and delight.

She stands at the door and says, “You’re home.”

As Caius looks up, a smile sweeps across his face. She runs to him. His embrace is warm and almost desperately tight, and she returns it with all the strength in her body, not settling in its comfort so much as forcing it around herself. Like a tight-furled blanket, it wraps both of them. She would be content to remain this way forever. Yet eventually she draws back enough to study him. Familiar face, the noble features elegant and a little drawn, with lips curved in that familiar, sweet smile. He wears an oak garland this time. That means he saved another warrior’s life on the battlefield—because of him, another family is experiencing this moment of homecoming.

“You’ve done well,” she whispers. Not that he requires her approval or her admiration, not in martial matters; but hearing it seems to lighten the shadows in his expression.

“Welcome,” she says more loudly, growing in confidence. Her hand slides down to find his fingers and take them. He squeezes hers back.

They barely excuse themselves to the others in the room. They’ve already had the chance to welcome him home. Now he is hers. Her heart jumps in her chest as she leads him to their bedroom. He’s still wearing gloves, the leather warm in her grip.

And armor, which Virgilia has learned her way around. As she unlaces the leather straps, he strips the gloves off and his bare palm traces her shoulders though thin linen. He  sweeps over her collar bone and moves down to her breasts—but then he has to let go, lifting his arms as she pulls the breastplate off. She’s sorry to lose his touch, but she needs to see him. His tunic, worn soft and salt-stained, leaves his short hair mussed like wind-tossed grass as she tugs it over his head.

It drops to their feet.

Caius smiles as her eyes drink him in. She feels her lips tug in answer, but it’s a smaller smile, distracted. A mark crosses his chest. Another scar, she thinks—but no, a long red line already healing, not deep enough to scar. She’s seen enough of them to judge by now.

He holds still as Virgilia traces a stripe over his unbroken flesh in parallel to the jagged cut.

“I told them you’d be back without a scratch,” she says ruefully.

“Then I apologize.”

She shakes her head. Her cheeks are heating, and the heat becomes more powerful as he tips his head to catch her gaze.

“I do.” His smile is gentle yet wicked at the same time. “I’m sure your friends have had enough of you boasting about me. They’ll be glad to see our reputations fail.”

Something more bitter might lie under his humor, but she lets it pass, only protesting, “I speak of many things with my friends besides you!”

“I’m certain.” His hands settle at her waist, and she steps closer to him, so close her breath falls from her lips across his chest. If it troubles the wound, he shows no sign of it. Her cheek brushes the fine hair covering his skin, and beneath it a rough net of older scars.

“I’m glad to see you safe,” she says.

“And I you.”

He doesn’t explain his injury. He rarely does, and she still isn’t certain whether that’s because he senses how it would worry her, or if he keeps silent for his own sake. He wakes sometimes in the middle of the night, his body snapping from sleep and his breathing sharp and sudden. She awakens, too, and lies beside him with her hands close to his but not quite touching, not until the moment when he turns and puts his arms around her. Then she returns the embrace. Then she holds him, caresses him, without a word. She doesn’t ask what troubles him and he never tells her. She doesn’t tell him all will be well, or any of the other mindless comforts like one says to children. His lips press her body with kisses instead of speech. In silence, they return to sleep. While she is holding him, and he is safe.

Some must disappointed that he returns with only a scratch and no more dramatic tale of tribulation or heroism. An oak crown is nothing to a scar, and nothing new. He’s earned such honors since he was a boy. That is not a thing they talk about either, especially not now.

She pulls back, her palms sliding over his naked torso. He’s firm as rock—sometimes _too_ hard, she thinks, savoring the moment when beneath her touch he begins to soften. Like a petted cat, like a hound at rest, he lets tension melt from him. His hands are still at her waist, the fingers tracing circles that wake her nerves in waves. As they spread over her, her breath begins to catch in her chest. But she doesn’t lose her awareness of his body. When she knows from how he has relaxed that it’s all right, she runs her fingertips along the red line itself.

She watches his face and not her hands. He winces, but only when her touch lightens—it is her gentleness, not pain, that undoes him.

She speaks with her hands—apologies, promises, of how she missed him, of how glad she is to have him back. Through feeling they relearn each other.

She is in no way composed now. When she remembers to breathe out, she makes a small moan that causes his shoulders to curl. And his lips. As they pull closer she feels the other part of him curving to nudge her stomach, proud and erect. An answering rush fills her between her thighs. She captures his smiling mouth, and he lets her before sweeping free, parting his lips to devour her in turn. Her moan as he sucks on her tongue is muffled, a vibration that passes between them more than a sound.

Caius tastes and smells like iron, leather, smoke. And beneath it all, a touch of sweetness that is him alone, unarmored and clean, elusive and intoxicating. His body is firm but pliant and warm. What she found in the letters was nothing but memory and imagination; now she’s almost overwhelmed to have him in her arms.

Their bed is five paces behind him. She wonders if he even remembers it. When she presses with her hands, half a caress and half a push, he steps back. He lies down slowly, drawing her with him, and with a sigh of triumph she falls.

As she rolls from his chest to rest on one arm, her skirt gets hiked up. Virgilia turns for him to pull it further, and he does not leave her waiting. Her legs part, offering space for him between them. Aching, she sighs to feel his touch, his hand met by wetness. She pulses with desire even in the places he isn’t touching her. Her nipples rise erect through her gown just from the weight of his eyes falling on them. His smile sends pleasure twisting through her as if his lips were on her skin.

Her gown’s hem is around her waist now, her husband lowering himself between her thighs. She looks down to see his face framed by her body, but what she sees makes her gasp in dismay. It is clear now what her aches had been—not only her desire but a warning. Red, dark red smears across her skin, stains the curls of hair over her sex.

When she tries to kick the skirt down, he catches it at her hips. He doesn’t force it back up but neither does he allow it to descend. “What is it?”

He follows her gaze to her legs, to the blood. Neither disgust nor disappointment is in his tone.

“Hmm.” If anything, as the sound pours down between her thighs, flows there even more hot and liquid than the red stain, it carries interest. In his warmth she feels her lust reflected.

Still, she needs to be sure. “You don’t mind?”

He brings his head up and his lips press hers in a gentle peck. “Why would I?” His knuckles skim the upper curve of her thigh, still holding her skirt. “Blood is nothing new to me.”

“To me neither,” she says, her tone as wry as his. But with a different underlying truth. She has seen blood but never shed it, or had hers shed, and despite the discomfort that sometimes accompanies it she has never thought of this monthly occurrence as a curse. Merely part of her body, even healthy. Blood to him is something more dangerous, more bitter.

“Do _you_ mind?” he asks at her hesitation.

“Not this.”

And she lies back and his hand, already slick from contact with her, releases cloth and moves into her sex. 

“Oh,” she gasps, gasps so hard it is as if the force of her breath pulls his lips close. Their mouths seal in a deeper kiss. Virgilia’s hands are still free, and she uses them to pull her gown farther up—baring her mound, her stomach, all the way past her breasts.

His first finger slides easily inside. A second follows as she spreads her legs farther, silently begging it, needing to feel his presence. Her nerves spark alive. There is another rush of wetness as his knuckles enter, and though she feels excited, excitement is not its only source. It feels different, once she knows. Blood feels heavier than her liquid arousal, and hotter. It feels _redder_. And it smells heavy, too, sharp with the tang of copper and iron. Strong enough to taste at the back of her throat as their kiss breaks and his mouth starts to travel down her body, as his skimming lips and flirting tongue set her trembling.

One reason she can’t consider this a curse is because this time makes her so easy to arouse, even more swiftly than usual under his skillful mouth and hands. The muscles gripping tight around his fingers begin tremoring, then yield to let him stroke deeper, easing to welcome him. Her nipples sting, soothed only by the lap of his tongue. His mouth’s wet sweetness tugs at them, then grazes the curves of her breasts, the angles of her ribs. The fingers of his other hand dance down her side. The very tip of one gently traces the band sof silver skin around her belly. Ever since she delivered their son two years ago she has worn lightning, or the stripes of a great cat. Elemental and wondrous.

He finds it even more fascinating than she does, and the thought is breathtaking. His fingers and mouth are careful as they worship skin above tender flesh. The slight ache there in her abdomen feels better with the distraction of pleasure. And lower he moves, his tongue at her folds, gliding between them through that rich slickness. He can’t be—!

“This once,” he whispers, as if to himself.

His tongue, lapping, and then his lips pressing, closed but not at all hesitant, along the space between her thighs.

Then her entire body and mind go still with the heady shock of feeling him swallow.

Then she sits up. He pulls back and raises his head to meet her gaze, a question in his own. She is shocked again to see the blood on his face, a smear of red that stands out vividly below his bright eyes. Though not horrified, she nonetheless hesitates before nodding for him to continue. She has never seen him like this before.

And he has never before tasted her quite like this.

He turns his head to nuzzle just above her knee, and as her tension eases he brings that leg to rest over his shoulder. Then, bending his head again, he finds the bud as erect as her nipples and gives it the same treatment they received. She wiggles, stripping her gown over her head to be fully naked at last. Her arms move almost without coordination. With one hand she takes her breast and strokes circles not quite in time to his licking. The other settles on his hair.

His head bobs. With a shudder her thighs close more tightly around him. Her knees strain as if to meet each other, and she sees the red kiss-print just below the right one.

“It’s not—” she starts, stops. They speak during lovemaking, but only when they have to, hardly indulging in casual conversation. Still, talking isn’t any more unprecedented than the rest of this. And just as her hands have to do something, so it seems does her tongue. “I don’t—It doesn’t taste—”

He draws away just enough to answer. “Not as rich as wine, but that’s not why I do this.”

So close, his breath falls on her flesh, but not in the way his tongue did, not nearly enough. Then his mouth returns, and oh, he wants her more than wine. He drinks deep. And she wants him more than anything. Desire keeps this from feeling filthy. It is strange, she can’t deny, but it isn’t wicked. It is a little wild. She so rarely indulges in wildness.

Now she does. She plays with him and with herself, she dares and coaxes more details from him. “How do I taste?” she asks.

“Compared to how you usually are?” Nuzzling again, this time against the insides of her thighs. “More bittersweet, earthier.”

He doesn’t flatter her; he has learned she doesn’t need flattery. And what more flattery could there be than the touch of his mouth? She’s asking from curiosity, wanting to share the experience with him.

The caress of his breath. “You smell—of yourself, underneath it. Less sour than—” His breath and words catch, and his hands on her waist and hip tighten. His hold eases before it becomes a grip. She brushes her fingers over his hair, showing as much understanding as she can. Because she knows what passed through his mind—that this is not the sort of blood he’s used to. In a way it is cleaner. Blood shed without violence—this once.

He comes up to rejoin her on the bed. Red marks his fingers to the base, and red flows down to his wrist. Scarlet marks his lips and paints his chin, dripping to his chest.

She reaches for him and licks there. She tastes herself—bittersweet metal, with salt beneath it, and some of the salt is from him. The sweat of sexual excitement is familiar. She finds his flavor with the rasp of her tongue and turns her cheek against his chest. Wetness tightens on her skin as it also becomes stained red.

“You look like a lioness,” he says. His tone is light enough to tease, but with a hoarseness that is more than laughter, that suggests he finds the sight unnerving.

“You looked like a lion first,” she answers. And their mouths meet in matching hunger, marked red like hunters that have bought down prey. His fingers are inside her again, moving in opposite directions, spreading her. She grips at the back of his neck, pulls at his hair just enough to make him moan. The sound fills her as much as his touch does. He pinches her breast between the knuckles of two fingers, pressure without sharpness as he knows she likes it. She rakes her nails down his back, scratching, as she knows he likes.

She growls, she purrs. His lioness. There is still sweetness between them even as they grow wild. His tenderness has left her tender, so sensitive that even gentleness would be torture. They are consumed by an insatiable, ravenous love.

As he pulls back to strip off his trousers, she can’t bear to remain untouched. Her hand goes between her own thighs, so rough her palm grinds at the bone of her pubis. Every nerve in her mound is alive, hot as fire, and it is sweet, so sweet. Her fingers swirl, stroking fast but with a lighter touch. Caius had caressed her like this—but slower, so much more carefully—after their son was born, as part of their first tentative coupling when she healed. So slow until she almost couldn’t stand it, until her hips knocked against his as she tried to meet and urge him on. At last he gave in to her urging, bringing her apart. She not only came, she’d soaked the bed with milk, her nursing breasts made part of her release. He’d laughed, but not mockingly; he has never been disgusted by anything her body is capable of.

Her body feels capable now of anything but going without. She slips fingers inside herself but then winces. She’s moved too fast, and now feels almost gouged inside—the angle is poor, and despite the wet red marking them both and the thrum of her arousal, she isn’t as slick as usual.

“Slow,” she tells him. A little sheepishly.

“Of course.” He lies back on the bed and brings her atop him. Blood drips onto his thighs. A few crimson spots. For all that she feels like a fountain, there isn’t so much. There hadn’t been blood on her wedding night, she remembers now, though her ladies had warned her that many young women did bleed. But when her time came she was so slick and open that it was nothing but joy. He had been slow then, too. Both of them had time to learn each other. They have, of course, only become better with age.

As her hands run over him, they smear red across his skin. A scarlet streak down his already ruddy member, swelling proudly and pulsing against her palm. Crimson covering the white of his scars.

Jarringly, it reminds her of the few times she has seen his blood. She hasn’t the skill to treat his wounds besides simply cleaning and rewrapping bandages. She wishes she knew how to do more. Waiting at home for him, she spins thread and sews cloaks for their family, banners for his legion. She wishes she could be the one to sew him, to put him back together. She wishes she could be a healer, but they only bring him to her at the end of his campaigns, after his wounds have started healing, after the work of it is done. Though she is the one to reach for him in the nights when he remembers.

His hands are at her waist. She leans back to be caught and cushioned by his legs as he draws them up. She grips his thighs for balance and for the pleasure of holding him. Her feet settle on his shoulders, and between them she sees his smiling face. She is no longer a slight girl, but he takes her weight easily. Her soles are tickled by the rasp of fine hair; her toes smear the red on his body. They wiggle and then curl as he starts to enter her. She pushes up with her feet and hands, she shifts her hips, and then she slowly comes down, easing his member deep inside.

His touch leaves her waist and finds more leverage gripping her bottom. He holds her tightly as they move. She is like the tide, steady and unstoppable, instinctive, tilting her pelvis up and back, forward and down. He meets her with more straightforward thrusts, angling right towards the core of her. They meet in a place that makes her scream. She goes wild with pleasure, mad with joy.

Her fingers tighten on his skin and when she takes them away, they leave marks.

She does not take them away until climax wrings her limp, and does the same to him.

She realizes only afterwards that one of his sounds was a grunt of pain rather than pleasure, or perhaps a mixture of the two. His wound has reopened and blood covers the cushions of the bed. Some of it, of course, is hers. No one would be able to tell, but they will guess that she pulled him to bed without care for his injuries. For once, everyone will know how wild she can be.

Let them know. Virgilia laughs, filled with strength that strips away boundaries and devours whatever it desires. She desires him. War takes him from her, the demands of their family’s honor and their city’s glory. Yet he returns to her, and when she has him, by every god in the heavens she will let them know it.

Afterwards, she is glad she asked for a hot bath. They run down the hall wrapped in blankets and squeeze together into the basin. She washes his hair, gently scrubs his back and chest. With a soft cloth he cleans her breasts and thighs. Afterwards she pats his torso dry and helps to wrap new bandages over his injury, which has ceased bleeding again.

Caius pulls her in for a kiss. She grants it gladly, but wrinkles her nose when they are done. “You still taste of me,” she says.

He laughs at the idea that it should bother her, and the wild part of her agrees, disdaining her disdain. Still, they must at least pretend to be civilized people. And so, almost like a civilized woman, she brings him mulled wine. She sits in his lap, holding the cup to his lips, watching the ruby-dark drink slip down his throat.

His arm rests around her, and after putting the emptied cup down Virgilia settles her head on his shoulder. Her fingers trace aimless patterns on his chest. They’re not following the marks of his scars, though she knows exactly where they lie.

“Are you pleased at my homecoming?” he asks.

“You know I am.”

“Yes, but you know I like to hear it.”

She whispers in his ear, “I am rapturous.”

And in this instant, it is true. Even with a faint, lingering ache, her body feels suffused with bliss, and her heart is too. She cannot overturn the world. But today she has him in her arms, safe. He won’t need to hurt others nor be hurt. His wounds will heal. And the red she has washed from their skin is not all warrior’s red.


End file.
